Cerberus had put you back together and they were asking you to do the impossible. For the second time, you had to save the world from reapers and their Collector army. Kaidan wanted nothing to do with you, Liara was too busy...So far only Garrus and Tali had rejoined you. The Illusive Man had just sent you more dossiers for recruitment and Tali had been the first from the new round to get picked up.

     You blinked at your scars in the mirror. Surely you would never be thought of as attractive again. Maybe to a krogan, but you weren't into Grunt that way and it was vice versa. You straightened your shoulders. Dr. Chakwas said that as long as you were psychologically and morally right, the scars would heal. It wasn't hard to be a good person, therefore you would heal soon.

X

     From the time you first saw him, you were deeply enthralled, even if the first time you saw him was when he killed a woman and a few of her guards before your eyes. He flowed with the grace of water as he took lives like one might pluck a bloom from a plant. He agreed to join you easily enough. Requesting the driest place aboard the ship,  he was given life support to make his home in.

     He was dying. A rare sickness only drell like him could experience. This worried you, but not for the Illusive Man's mission. No. Immediately it worried you on a deeper level. Was the pain bad? Was he scared deep down? Did he have regrets he needed help with? His demeanor was calm,  collected. Put together. But you felt yourself forming attachments to the dying man his first day on board the ship.

     You took him on every mission, took time every day to speak to him. It was fascinating the way he would slip into memories; relive them before your eyes. Sollipsism, he called it. Not to mention he was quite handsome in your eyes. It didn't take long for your fascination to grow into complete and utterly tangled feelings of love and dread for his eventual death.

     Secretly in your own time, you researched endlessly, spent hundreds of thousands of credits on finding something. Anything for the drell who had caught your eye so easily. You didn't tell him. He was quite at peace with his inevitable end, something that only increased your own pain. It hit you one day after you'd picked up Grunt on Tuchanka. You were in love with Thane Krios. And it hurt.

     You found your way to life support. "Let's talk about things if you have a moment. You mind if I ask a few questions?"

     "Not at all." His reply was short and to the point. You liked that about him. Thane didn't waste his words because his time was precious.

     "The drell live on the hanar homeworld, right?" You wanted to know more about his people. More about him. Who he was.

     "Yes. I know many think the hanar difficult to understand. It's just they're very formal with those they don't know. We know them quite well. If you ever get close enough to a hanar that they would tell you their soul name, you would find them quite warm."

     Your interest piqued. Sharing soul names was like telling someone your most intimate secret. Thane must be very special. Even more than you thought. "You know a soul name? I thought hanar only let very close friends know their soul names."

     The assassin cracked a bare smile. Tiny. Almost nonexistent. "Most of my commissions were for hanar. I grew closer to my regular contacts. Soul names tend to be poetic."

      "They don't speak, do they? Hanar talk using bioluminescence. That's more of an obstacle than their politeness."

     He seemed impressed that you knew about the bioluminescence. Another tiny, little smile. Your heart thudded painfully in your chest. You wanted to see that look on his face all the time. "True. Many drell have had their eyes genetically modified to perceive higher frequency flashes. I had the treatment. I can't tell the difference between a dark red and black, but I can see ultraviolet light as a silver color. "

     There was something else on your mind. "When you 'pray for the wicked',  who are you praying to?"

     Surprise. You smiled yourself. You wanted every detail of his existence. You would never forget the things he told you. "That depends on the circumstance. To find my target, I speak with Amonkira, lord of hunters. When I act to defend Another,  Arashu - goddess of motherhood and protection. When I've taken my target, I speak with Kalahira - goddess of oceans and the afterlife. "

     "You're polytheistic? I didn't know the drells had so many gods." It was fascinating, to the point it stirred something in you. Could you believe his beliefs? You could. They sounded profound and resonated with some part of you. How to ask-

     "It's one of our older beliefs. Many embrace the hanar enkindlers now. Or the asari philosophies. The old ways are dying with me. There's so many ways to interpret one's place in the universe. Who needs the wisdom of our ancestors? The younger generations don't believe they can help us fathom genetic engineering, orbital strikes, or alien races."

     You changed the subject back to religion. "Oceans and afterlife? They don't seem to have much in common."

     "Consider. The ocean is full of life. Yet it is not life as you and I know it. To survive there, we must release our hold on land. Accept a new way to live. So it is with the death. The soul must accept its departure from the body. If it can't, it will be lost."

     You winced. You were not ready to accept his departure the way he was. There was too much unsaid. "Thank you." You smiled warmly. He nodded and you saw yourself out. Head spinning, you went up to the top of the ship and threw yourself on your military-simple bed. "EDI, tell me about the drell."

     "Again, Shepard?" The artificial intelligence was amused. You nodded.

     EDI's pleasant voice picked up from where it had left off the previous night, whisking you away into a religious world of assassins and sickness.